


Little Brother

by ishtarelisheba



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen, Ish promptathon, season 6 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-12 01:34:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10479081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishtarelisheba/pseuds/ishtarelisheba
Summary: After the initial skirmish between Gideon and Emma, Neal joins the efforts to find his little brother before the 'heroes' can. (AU in which Neal is alive and Swanfire is on the bubble of happening.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt - _Anonymous said: Can you write a season 6 AU that's pretty much the same except Neal's alive instead of Hook? How would he deal with Gideon and Emma and all this destiny nonsense?_

Standing there frozen while Gideon and Emma fought had been like a nightmare. Admittedly, Neal had only known about his brother’s existence for a few weeks, and only known his brother as a person for a few hours total, but he loved the kid. He loved _both_ of them, and he didn’t want either to come to harm. He was going to some crazy lengths to try and ensure that didn’t happen, as a matter of fact. Which was why he was dragging his ass down the shore at three in the morning to try and reason with the thus far unreasonable.

His Papa and Belle had been scouring town and the surrounding woods, respectively, but neither of them knew what it was like to be where Gideon was. Neal, however, had a pretty good idea. He remembered how, when he got away from Neverland, the last thing he wanted to see for years were trees. It was why he ended up in New York. A concrete jungle was far preferable to the green variety. By that token, Gideon being kept in cages the way he was, Neal figured his little brother would seek out open air. 

Hence the seashore.

Cupping gloved hands over his mouth and nose, he blew warm air into them, trying to bring some feeling back into his fingers. Heck of a time to be trailing a wayward sibling. He widened his eyes in the dark, wishing there were either more moonlight or less cloud cover. He’d be lucky if he could tell a person from a piling.

There was a shape, though. Something dark and tall. He waited to see if it would move. The breeze shifted the right way, and his little brother’s cloak billowed out on it.

“Gideon?” He started trotting toward the big blob of shadow near the water, but the shape that he was pretty sure was his brother turned to stalk away. “Hey! Hey, kid!”

The figure whirled on him, crackling with dark magic. Yeah, that’d be his brother, all right.

“I am not a kid!” Gideon yelled back at him.

Neal raised his hands up in surrender “Okay, okay, you’re right,” he said. “You’re not a kid. It was meant as an affectionate term, you know?”

Gideon blinked at the explanation and seemed to calm a little. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you think? Same thing Papa and Belle are doing. Looking for you.”

“I don’t need to be looked for.”

“Need and want are two different things, though, aren’t they?”

Gideon scowled at him a bit. “Why are you looking for me? All of you?”

He advanced on Neal a few steps, clearly expecting him to retreat. Neal didn’t give in, though, and they ended up almost nose to nose. Well, nose to forehead - _where_ the hell did this kid get being a six-footer?

“To help you,” Neal said gently. 

Gideon sniffed. “To keep me from killing the Savior. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, well. Six of one, half dozen of the other.”

“What?” Gideon shook his head and pulled a face, confusion with his brother’s patter irritating him. 

“Stopping you from hurting Emma _is_ helping you,” Neal reasoned.

“No!” Gideon snapped at him, turning away, his heavy black cloak whirling around him. Gods, their father’s dramatic gestures were apparently genetic. “No, if you wanted to help me, you would help me to defeat her!”

“Gideon… You know that’s not gonna happen. Emma, she’s the mother of my child, and I still-” Neal cleared his throat, cutting _that_ thought right off.

Gideon spun to look at him with a ridiculously judgmental expression for a kid with the emotional maturity of a five-year-old and a wardrobe that looked like it came out of their father’s closet back in the Forest. “You love the Savior.”

Neal looked down at the footprints around them in the sand. He did, and he was pretty sure she did, but they were still dancing. If hell would give it a rest with breaking loose, maybe they could sort that whole relationship thing out.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s pretty obvious, I guess.”

“I can’t take that into account,” Gideon claimed, but Neal thought he heard some regret in his brother’s voice. “Brother or not.”

“I’m not asking you to. What I’m asking is that you find another way.”

When Gideon tried to stalk away, Neal hurried to catch up and keep pace. _Damn kid and his long legs._

“I understand why you’re doing this,” Neal said. “I do, really. You want to help those kids trapped in _Grandma’s_ realm, or whatever. Your situation’s not as unique as you think.”

Gideon slowed down and Neal finished catching up, walking next to him. He swore he could see his bigger-little brother looking sidelong at him every once in a while. Good.

“When I was a kid, there was this war,” Neal began. And oh man, didn’t that bring up memories he never wanted to have run through his head again. “Long story short, I was going to have to fight, and Papa didn’t want me to have to. That curse he’s living with? I don’t know how much you know, but he took that on _willingly_ to keep me from being fed into battle as cannon fodder. And he saved a thousand children pressed into military service, while he was at it. There were kids I wanted to save in a whole ’nother realm a few years after. That… that didn’t work out too well, granted. But my point is, I see where you’re coming from, and so does Papa. And Belle - that’s how she and Papa met in the first place. She made a deal with him to save her _entire people.”_

Neal ran a hand over his face when his brother didn’t respond. “I guess we’re just a family with a habit of wanting to save others, huh?”

“You’re attempting to relate to my situation, but you have no idea,” Gideon muttered, his hands curling into all too tantrum-like fists at his sides as they walked.

“What don’t I know? Tell me. I’m right here, and I’m listening as hard as I can.”

Rage crossed Gideon’s face, though this time, Neal got the feeling it wasn’t directed toward him at all. “You have no idea what it’s like, living nearly thirty years being tormented under the thumb of a monster, of someone who is technically a part of your _family!”_

“Yeah? You think so?” Neal laughed bitterly. “Nah, I don’t know what it’s like to live thirty years that way. Try _three hundred,_ kiddo.”

The smug look on Gideon’s face dissolved into shock.

Neal nodded, looking at his feet as they walked. “Yeah. So. You could listen when I’m trying to talk to you about this whole clusterfuck.”

“What can I _do,_ though?” Gideon asked, shaking his head hard. “There are children trapped there with her still. Imprisoned in cages. Being tortured. Being broken. I have to save them, and if it means taking one life, then-”

“It doesn’t work that way. Taking one life? Killing an innocent person for a ‘good cause’?” Neal frowned, stopping. “Things don’t work like that. Even if it weren’t Emma you were going after for this, we’d still be trying to stop you. You get that right? We can’t just let you murder somebody for their powers. And you don’t have to steal the title of Savior to save anybody.”

“How long am I meant to wait? What will she do to them in her realm while I waste time here with you? What would you have me do, then?!” Gideon grew more hysterical the longer he went on.

“Now, see, that’s the right question!” Neal grabbed his brother by the arm and turned them to face one another. “What you’re gonna do? _That’s_ what we need to find out, and the only way we’re gonna find it out is by you coming back with me to talk to Papa and Belle. If you want problem solvers, they’re the best problem solvers in town. Come back with me. I’m not great with the magic stuff, but I can crack a book, and if _anybody_ can dig up a solution for this, it’s _our_ family.”

Gideon looked thoughtful, frowning down at the hem of his robes and his brother’s shoes. “Our family?”

“Yeah, ours.” Neal pulled Gideon forward into the most tense hug he’d ever been a part of. He felt his little brother’s arms hovering indecisively for a moment before the kid finally hugged him back. With absolutely no loss of tension. But hey, it was a start.

“All right,” Gideon grit out reluctantly. “I’ll go back with you.”

Neal smiled, leaning away. His brother turned with him to head back toward town, but he figured his guts would probably stay clenched until they were all locked and warded safely in their Papa’s shop. He loved Emma more than anything except Henry, but he stilled feared what the ‘heroes’ might do in the name of keeping her safe.


End file.
